


Final fantasy VII 30 Table Prompt fics

by mystiri1



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: 30 table, Gen, tags and ratings subject to change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-02 13:29:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6568189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystiri1/pseuds/mystiri1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of unrelated ficlets based on 30 prompts from a table.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 01. Defiant

For as long as Sephiroth can remember, there have always been orders. And he has always followed them. He's not sure he ever conceived of an alternative: the result of growing up in the labs, under Hojo's thumb, where the consequences of defiance were... unthinkable. Unimaginable. Unspeakable horrors, or even worse.

It's true that First Class SOLDIERs have some leeway. That they can accept or decline missions. And Sephiroth is, technically, a First Class. (Sephiroth is in a class of his own, an experiment, a specimen, tool, a weapon, and as such not expected to have opinions of his own, let alone exercise something as individual as choice.) 

Sephiroth has never declined a mission.

But the battlefields of Wutai loosened the chains that held him. Yes, there were missions. Yes, there were orders. But unlike the controlled confines of the laboratory or the training rooms, anything can happen, and anything often does. No orders can ever fully cover every possible problem that can crop up during a mission; Sephiroth is expected to 'use his judgement'. That judgement may be informed by the orders he is given, by the many years of training, but it is his decisions that decide the course of battle.

That he improves over time is to be expected. While he must explain his actions in debrief, the questions gradually decrease. Sephiroth's judgement in battle, at least, is respected. 

It is little wonder he finds battlefields more welcoming than the halls and corridors of Midgar. There are far less scientists, for one.

But the war does come to an end, and back to Midgar he goes. Sephiroth doesn't decline any mission he is offered, because they get him away from there. And away is always better. The others do, but the others are different. They are used to a myriad of choices, have always had them, but while Sephiroth enjoys the freedom of battle, feels confident in his ability to shape the outcome to his liking, the rest of the world remains a complex puzzle of interactions he cannot predict or control. And in Midgar, the consequences of failure are ominously close. 

So he doesn't understand when they leave, wants to know why they would make such a choice, but following them is the only way to find out. And the mission that crosses his desk is clear in its orders, in the outcome he is expected to bring about. Nowhere in there is room for explanations, for discussing choices he never considered as a possibility, for understanding. The orders are clear, and concise. Final.

Defiance of ShinRa, whatever the reason, is not to be tolerated.

For the first time ever, Sephiroth declines a mission.


	2. 02. Powder

Midgar is... not what she expected. Her first few days are a confused jumble, lost to the numbness of grief, to the point where Tifa is only vaguely sure she remembers how she came to be working here, at 7th Heaven. Zangan brought her here, said she would be safe, that there were things she could learn...

 

But that doesn't mean she understands why she is tending bar in the slums (Slums! She thought Midgar was supposed to be a shining jewel of a city, yet another of ShinRa's lies!) instead of doing... something. Anything else. The problem is Tifa isn't sure what she _should_ be doing. Zangan is gone, and although she keeps up with her training every day, she's not sure how the martial arts she has learned over the past few years could make any difference against an enemy that sits so far above her, in more ways than one.

 

So she works, and before long it is almost comfortable. It's different from the life she knew before, but Tifa had always wanted different; not under these circumstances perhaps, but keeping busy makes it easier not to dwell on that.

 

7th Heaven is not a particularly rowdy sort of bar. Although Tifa has tossed out one or two drunks for causing trouble (it's oddly satisfying, not the least because they always look so surprised that it's _her_ doing it) that tends to be the exception, rather than the rule. Most of their patrons stop in on the way back from shift-work, to grab a hot meal and a cold drink before heading home. Tifa finds it ironic that now she learns how to cook; back home, her father paid a housekeeper to take care of such things, and she never wanted to learn because being a housewife was the future she was desperate to escape. 7th Heaven doesn't offer anything fancy - hearty stews and simple snacks, for the most part - but she is learning.

 

It's Jessie, an older girl who works there, who teaches her how to cook. Her mother taught her, she explains, and something in her expression means Tifa doesn't ask more. She lost her mother long before Nibelheim burned, and knows that look from seeing it in the mirror. Part of the reason stews and soups are so common on the menu are that they can be stretched further, and are easily modified; the trick, Jessie informs her, is knowing what measurements need to stay the same, and what can be altered to fit whatever ingredients that are on hand. At first it looks like some sort of arcane art, as Jessie measures out spices and seasonings with a deft hand and attention to detail, then tosses other things into the pot with a careless wave. But gradually she gets the hang of it, and feels quite proud the first time she serves up a bowl that is entirely her own making.

 

The customers may not exactly be the fiercest of culinary critics, but that doesn't mean they don't enjoy their food.

 

And the longer she is there, the more the numbness wears off. She starts noticing things. At first it is just remembering the people who come in on a regular basis and where they tend to sit, but soon its realising that some people come in only to almost immediately disappear, only to reappear hours later. Some of them don't come in at the shift-changes, but right before closing, and she doesn't see them leave.

 

And so, gradually, she learns about AVALANCHE, and why Zangan left her here, of all places.

 

It changes how she looks at things, at the people she around her. There's Barret, with his missing arm and its weaponised replacement, loud and gruff with anger, but soft-hearted, especially where his daughter is concerned. There's little Marlene, who looks nothing like her father, and the difference is telling. Tifa is not the only one to have lost something to ShinRa, and knowing that draws her out even more. There's Biggs and Wedge, at the bar almost every evening. They're both mechanically inclined, and the blueprints they often have on hand have more to do with well-aimed destruction than building anything. And there are others, who come and go almost constantly, doing things that stretch far beyond the bounds of Midgar alone.

 

And so one evening, in the secret rooms hidden under the bar, Tifa watches Jessie measure out liquids and powders with exacting precision, combining them into a recipe she doesn't yet understand. Somehow, these simple everyday items will become an explosive and do far more damage than a single person could possibly do alone. It seems surreal that, in many ways, this reminds her of the first time she helped in the kitchen when the end goal is so much more destructive. But Tifa is determined to learn, even more so now.

 

“How did you learn this?” she asks, as Jessie grinds granules of some kind of industrial cleaner into a fine powder, before measuring it once again and adding it to the heavy metal bowl on the table.

 

“My father was a scientist before he disappeared. My mother taught me how to cook,” Jessie says with a wistful smile, before it grows just a little wider, a little more vicious, “but my father taught me chemistry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one stumped me for awhile, and I narrowed it down to something to do with snow (no inspiration whatsoever for this), and gunpowder. So... you get Tifa learning how to make explosives.


	3. 04. Decent

Reeve had always prided himself on his rationality, calm and intelligence. In the midst of the nest of vipers that is ShinRa Electrical Power Company, he didn't allow himself to be pulled into petty arguments and partisanship, merely did his job and let his competence speak for itself. Although the monolithic company was scarcely a meritocracy, this had allowed him to rise through the ranks, and stay near the top. 

 

It helped that Urban Development was not a post that offered much glory – the Plate had been 'near completion' for years now, and it would likely remain that way for several more, the way his department was funded – and there was not quite so much cut-throat competition for a post that was considered 'mere' administration of such a long-term project. The Plate had been around for so long that people took its existence for granted,  forgetting that there were parts of it still incomplete.

 

Reeve knew better. He'd helped build the Plate, even if he'd come aboard in the final stages of its construction. And he knew just how much work went into keeping it running smoothly, how every piece of work or new construction on the raised surface needed to be carefully vetted for potential problems and how everything below, from sewage to scrap metal to the running of the trains, potentially impacted its long-term stability.

 

So he was horrified to lose control to the point that he almost physically attacked Heidegger for his taunting words – he was supposed to be better than that – and the President's words, coming from behind him, hit him like an icy cold bucket of water.

 

"You're tired. Why don't you take a couple of days off and go somewhere." 

 

It was not really a suggestion, even if it was phrased as such. Beneath it lay a not-so-carefully veiled threat. Reeve nodded, muttered something in acknowledgement, and left, unwilling to turn so that the fury still present on his face was visible.

 

Hopefully, the President would not take it as a slight. Because Reeve was already, he knew, treading on thin ice. 

 

He took the stairs, unwilling to wait for the elevator. Urban Development had its own floor, not quite high enough to be considered important, but far enough from the Ground Floor to be otherwise inconvenient.  When he reached it, he hit the door and kept going, moving through the offices at a speed that would have drawn attention if they weren't chronically short-staffed. As it was, few were there to notice. He reached his office before stopping, hitting a hidden control panel by the door and only relaxing when all lights lit up green. 

 

Nobody had entered in his absence, and surveillance was coming up clean.

 

He took several deep breaths. On one level, the engineer in him cried out at the sheer sacrilege of it: the Plate was a marvel of modern construction, and they were proposing to destroy part of it as a political manoeuvre. Another was equally horrified that he  _ hadn't _ attacked Heidegger, and the President, too, for that matter. What sort of person would continue to work for a company that would willingly kill thousands of innocents in an attempt to take out a few dissenters? What kind of person valued his own life over so many?

 

Reeve sat behind his desk, and stared at the map spread across its surface, a map he knew so intimately he didn't even have to look at it to state exactly which supports were critical to a particular section, and where their potential weaknesses lay.

 

What sort of person told them the most efficient manner of causing such destruction?

 

Reeve prided himself on his rationality. There were battles he could win, and those he couldn't. He was an engineer, not a fighter - not in any sense of the word.

 

He picked up his PHS, and felt a moment of gratitude that his interest had drifted more and more towards electronics over the past few years. He disliked the invasive  surveillance that was part of living and working within the confines of ShinRa, and had quietly made steps towards ensuring he could circumvent it whenever he deemed it necessary. Nobody would overhear the calls he was going to make before leaving, as ordered, on a few days' vacation.

 

The advantage of being so short-staffed, of being so heavily involved with even the day-to-day minutiae of keeping the Urban Development running, was that he had contacts everywhere. It bothered him to repeat the company line, to claim terrorist threats as the source of danger, but the explosions that had already taken down two reactors were still at the forefront of everyone's mind, and an unofficial evacuation began. He even managed to relocate several pieces of machinery so that they would be of better use to the recovery efforts, when they began.

 

Then he requisitioned a helicopter and pilot, grabbed an overnight case, and left.

 

Reeve knew what sort of person he was. He'd chosen to work for ShinRa in order to be part of one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever. He'd never had any illusions about the company, and he'd made his choices. He'd stay a few days at the company's villa in Costa del Sol, and the fact that he'd inevitably spend that time tinkering with machinery instead of 'relaxing' the beach didn't change the truth that he would then come back and go to work for ShinRa once more - assuming the President didn't send a Turk or two to retire him for his earlier lapse. The amount of work the Plate's fall would cause should mean they weren't quite so eager to get rid of him, at least. 

 

Perhaps it was harder knowing what sort of person he wasn't. He might prefer to think he was different, but now he had as much blood on his hands as any of the other executives.

  
Reeve was already in the air, miles from Midgar, when the Plate fell. He never looked back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the numbers are out of order. This is for me, because I haven't actually written the fics in numerical order, and I need to keep track of which prompts I have posted. I also considered several ideas, and decided I wanted to keep this collection as more serious works, so no jumping on several easier interpretations of some prompts. No smut, sorry.


End file.
